


Young and Naive Still

by FagurFiskur



Series: 30 (more) cheesy tropes [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, De-Aged Dean Winchester, Episode: s10e12 About A Boy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3518876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FagurFiskur/pseuds/FagurFiskur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas doesn't look at him different, and Dean didn't realize until this moment how relieved that would make him. Whether he's fourteen or approaching forty, Cas still just sees him as Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Young and Naive Still

**Author's Note:**

> 30 (more) cheesy tropes: #27 De-aged
> 
> Basically an AU where Dean didn't go back to being an adult at the end of About a Boy. Title from Young Blood by The Naked and Famous.

Cas doesn't look at him different, and Dean didn't realize until this moment how relieved that would make him. Whether he's fourteen or approaching forty, Cas still just sees him as Dean.

He also doesn't act surprised when Dean says he wants to stay this way.

"There is of course the possibility," he says, "that the mark will come back once you reach the same age you were when you first received it."

Dean shrugs. "Maybe, but I've got an extra twenty-one years to figure out what to do about it."

And Cas just nods, and that's the end of that.

\---

Being fourteen again comes with its own set of issues. All the bodily issues Dean's already complained about, loudly and often, but also some unexpected setbacks.

"You can't be serious."

Sam looks at him from across the table, and yes, that is definitely his serious face. "I'm just saying, Dean. It's not like you can go back to hunting."

"Why not?" Dean says. "It's not like I wasn't hunting the first time I was fourteen."

"Which is why, this time around, you should have the opportunities you didn't have back then. To focus on school, to make friends. To have a normal life."

Dean leans back in his seat, aware of just how much he looks like a sulking teenager. But then he _is_  a sulking teenager. "Whatever. It's not your responsibility."

"Actually, Dean, it kind of is." Sam grimaces. "You have the memories of a thirty-six year old, but physically and psychologically you're a kid. You need someone to look after you."

"And that someone is you."

Dean waits for Sam to deny it, but he doesn't. It kind of makes sense, in a twisted sort of way. Sam is still in his thirties, after all. Hell, he's old enough to be Dean's father. But everything about this situation screams _wrong_. Dean is the one meant to look after Sam, not the other way around.

"You don't have to make up your mind right away," Sam says gently. "We can wait until the new school year starts."

"Great," Dean deadpans.

He feels like he's gonna throw up.

\---

A week later, he's enrolled in Lebanon High School.

It isn't any more exciting than it was the first time around. Dean sticks to himself mostly; getting friendly with teenagers feels creepy when there's a part of him that thinks he's still thirty-six and he's more attracted to the hot English teacher than he is to any of the students. A few kids try to talk to him but they give up soon when Dean doesn't reply, and he settles comfortably in his role of loser outcast.

But a few months go by, and his memories of adulthood grow fainter and fainter. Then one day, Dean catches himself checking out a senior cheerleader in the hallway. His eyes follow her as she walks past him, focus on the way her skirt shifts as she walks. Then he snaps out of it.

He really needs a drink.

\---

There's no alcohol in the bunker. Of course there isn't any fucking alcohol in the bunker, Sam doesn't want to 'set a bad precedence'. At most there's the occasional six-pack of light beer, but they're all out at the moment.

So instead of getting roaring drunk as he'd planned, Dean goes and jerks off, stubbornly thinking about the hot English teacher the entire time.

\---

It's as if that cheerleader makes some sort of dam burst inside him, since Dean finds a lot more people are turning his head in the hallways than there were before. And it's not all girls.

Dean remembers finding the occasional guy hot during his first run at adolescence, but he doesn't remember it happening _so often_. Or maybe it's just that he's gotten worse at repressing it.

He doesn't get how just deeply screwed he is until Cas shows up at the bunker again. He's been away for a while on angelic business, keeping contact through texts and phone calls, but he's there when Dean comes back from school one day.

And right from the first moment he opens his mouth and rumbles out, "Hello, Dean", Dean knows he's in deep shit.

\---

His attraction to Cas is hardly a new thing. It's just a lot more difficult to keep the lid on it right now. Plus, there's that whole thing where Dean is fourteen and Cas is almost three times his age (physically speaking, that is).

Dean decides not to make a big deal of it. He can keep his pervy thoughts to himself, he's just going to need to buy a lot more lube and tissues.

\---

"How are you adjusting?" Cas asks him.

"Fine," Dean says, and it's almost the truth.

Cas hums. "Heaven is calm. I'm not much needed there anymore."

"What about your grace?"

"Metatron remains silent on that front." Cas grins wryly. "But I'm still working on it."

He doesn't explain any further what 'working on it' means. Dean thinks maybe it's better he doesn't know.

\---

Sam doesn't hunt anymore. There's a part of Dean, a small, bitter part, that thinks that maybe Sam's been waiting for an opportunity just like this, where he could force Dean to quit so he could as well. But whether that's true or not, it's not like Dean could have kept hunting. He knows as much now.

Maybe he'll go back to it when he's an adult again. He honestly isn't sure.

\---

Summer comes, and Cas leaves again.

When he comes back, it's after three weeks of complete radio silence. He just shows up in the bunker's war room, as if he was never gone at all.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean spits at him, his relief at seeing Cas again quickly replaced by anger. "Why the fuck didn't you call? I thought you were dead!"

Sam puts a hand on his shoulder, a placating and almost fatherly gesture that makes Dean want to shrug it off and punch him. "We were worried, Cas."

"I apologize," Cas says, "but where I've been didn't have much cellphone reception."

"Where you..." Dean trails off. Cas looks different than he did before he left. Calmer, somehow, or maybe more tranquil is the word. "You got your grace back."

Cas smiles.

\---

Cas doesn't leave again. Not for any more than two or three days at a time, and rarely at that.

They settle into something like a comfortable life. Dean still doesn't socialize with the kids at school, but he starts to pull in really good grades - the kind he never did the first time around. Charlie drops by sometimes (the first time she sees Dean she laughs for about an hour), and Garth calls to check on them every now and then.

Dean's fifteenth birthday comes and goes with little in the way of celebration, aside from some nice apple pie and Dean getting full remote control dibs for the evening. It's all he needs, really, and it hits him then that he is, possibly for the first time in his life, happy. Actually and truly happy.

\---

Things aren't perfect, of course. Things still go bump in the night and it takes real willpower for Dean not to go rushing out to investigate when he reads about an odd death in the newspaper. Sitting around like this makes him feel utterly useless, but he reasons with himself that it's not like he could actually do anything to help. If he tried, Sam and Cas would drag him back to the bunker kicking and screaming.

There's also that whole thing where he pops a boner every time Cas says his name in a particular way or leans over so his pants stretch over his ass.

But he's trying not to dwell on it.

\---

"I'm thinking about taking some online classes," Sam says at the breakfast table.

"Huh," Dean says.

"What kind of classes?" Cas politely asks.

Sam shrugs, casual in a very practiced kind of way. He's obviously nervous about this announcement. "Um, pre-law. I've forgotten most of what I already learned, so I figured I should relearn it before I..."

"Go back to law school?" Dean finishes for him. He's got a weird feeling in his gut, something that makes him feel vaguely nauseous but mostly just unsettled. He's not sure he likes the idea of Sam going back to school.

"Not for a while, though," Sam says hurriedly. "I mean, not before you finish high school."

"And then you move half-way across the country again?"

Sam fidgets. "Maybe? But only if you'd want to come, too. There's plenty of Universities in this state."

Dean doesn't know how he's meant to feel about any of this, so he goes back to shoveling cereal into his mouth.

\---

On his sixteenth birthday, Sam lets him have a beer.

"Just one," he says as he hands the bottle to Dean, which immediately undercuts whatever cool points he might have otherwise earned.

They invite Charlie over, and she brings a couple of gaming consoles and a stack of games. They spend hours playing, tournaments and two against two, until their wrists start to cramp up and their eyeballs feel dried up.

Dean ends up sneaking four bottles of beer, and at the end of the evening he's feeling just drunk enough to have a long and embarrassingly emotional discussion with Sam about the future. At the end of it, Dean feels kind of guilty over ever having doubts about Sam going back to law school. It's not his decision to make, after all. 

"Your opinion matters," Sam tells him. "You're my brother, Dean."

Dean nods. "Damn right. And I still will be, even if you move halfway across the country without me."

He's not leaving Kansas, he decides then. He's never felt at home anywhere else. But that doesn't mean he's got any right to make Sam stay too.

\---

Dean doesn't drink again until over two years later, at some girl's graduation party. Apparently even as a loser outcast Dean's still got some game, since the girl extends an invitation to him personally. He's not much interested in hooking up with her or whatever she wants to do, but he figures having one authentic high school experience before he graduates can't hurt. He never got to graduate the first time around, so he's never gone to a graduation party.

He doesn't hook up with girl, but he ends up making out with a dude with neck tattoos and amazing arms. He's a lot older than the other people at the party, the host's older brother as it turns out, there mostly to make sure that none of the guests break anything. 

They don't get past first base (too much like taking advantage, the guy says, which makes Dean snort), but Dean goes home feeling invincible and slightly buzzed.

He runs into Cas on his way back to his room.

"Did you have a good time?" Cas asks.

In response, Dean grabs the lapels of his coat and pulls him in for a kiss. It takes a couple of moments of fumbling but then Cas is leaning into it, kissing him back, and Dean is pretty sure he hit his head at that party and is passed out in some stranger's living room because _this can't be happening_.

But it is, and when they pull apart he can't keep the smile off his face.

"Dean," Cas says, sounding amazed, "are you sure?"

Dean nods. "I've wanted this for years, Cas."

That seems to be enough for Cas, who grabs his hand and intertwines their fingers, before kissing Dean again, in a way that's simultaneously worshipful and _hungry_.

\---

Losing his virginity the second (or is it third?) time goes about as well as it did the first time. That is to say, it's clumsy and kind of awkward and over way too soon. But it's amazing anyway.

Afterwards, they lie down next to each other. Cas' hand stays on Dean's arm, tracing patterns into his inner elbow. The way he looks at Dean makes him feel weirdly vulnerable, stripped bare in ways past the obvious. But it's the same way he's always looked at Dean, really. Like he's staring into his soul and loves whatever it is that he sees, even though Dean can't imagine that it's pretty. 

Eighteen years from now, the mark might reappear on Dean's arm. It might not. At this moment, Dean doesn't really care. Doesn't care about anything, so long as Cas keeps looking at him like this.


End file.
